Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/516

478 the people of the several States, without any condition precedent except liability to be punished according to the laws; Mr. Dawson, of Pennsylvania, proposed that the President make a proclamation that hostilities cease against any State whenever it shall submit to the authority of the Federal government; and Mr. Long, of Ohio, afterward pushed these proffers of peace by a resolution, earnestly and respectfully requesting the President to appoint Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, and Thomas Ewing, and such others as he may select to meet a like commission from the Confederate States &quot; for the purpose of ascertaining before the renewal of hostilities shall have again commenced whether the war shall not now cease, and the Union be restored. These laudable efforts to bring together in amity the wearied contestants were made during a long lull of active war produced by the snows and sleets of winter, but they all fell one by one beneath the relentless axe of this same party vote.

On the other side we find a manifestation of Confederate feeling in the consideration during the year 1863 of &quot;peace resolutions&quot; by the legislatures of the States and the press of the South, as well as in the public ad dresses of common statesmen. Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President, whose course indicates throughout an earnest desire on his part to be an agent in the pacification of the country and even in the restoration of the Union, began to say at this period that &quot;the only terms on which we can obtain permanent peace are final and complete separation from the North." Mr. Herschel V. Johnson, who was the running mate of Mr. Douglas in 1860, said to the Georgia legislature, &quot;There is no step backward, we cannot yield if we would. The feeling grew to be general that neither aid from foreign nations nor the fraternal efforts of the peace party in the Northern States could be relied on, but that physical force alone, or some possible accident, must determine the great issue. Later on, how-